


life without your light isn't life

by ell (amywaited)



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Angst, Endings, Love Confession, M/M, Sad, Song fic, Suicide, kind of cute but in a bittersweet sad way, not explicit but implied/referenced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 04:29:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20558258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amywaited/pseuds/ell
Summary: “And that we don’t blame you,” Mike continues. “I’m sorry, too. That it had to be this way, that we made that fucking pact, that it all happened in the first place.” He laughs again, but this time it’s angry, like he’s screaming out at the world and it just isn’t listening.





	life without your light isn't life

**Author's Note:**

> okay this is inspired by [missing you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAP8P8IQI7M) by chosen jacobs, because my friend ri asked me to write a stanlon fic inspired by it! also its a very good song - the title is from it too!
> 
> so, the way i imagined it, the song is like mike talking AFTER stan took a bath, and this fic is what happened before that. i guess it's kind of up to interpretation though, because the song changed meaning to me each time i listened to it (and i think ive contributed to at least half of the streams on spotify now).
> 
> ANYWAY, basic trigger warnings apply: implied/referenced suicide. like the book, so if youre sensitive to that stuff maybe give it a skip. and i hope u enjoy! love u!

The phone rings five times.

Five times too many, five times too long, loud and erosive and explosive in Stan’s ear. His cheeks are slippery with tears, but he’s long grown used to that. The sticky, half-damp state of his face is uncomfortable and tight and itchy but it’s all he has, and he clings to it with sharp resolute.

He rings again, frozen solid hope digging into his heart and pushing its way into his lungs. He hates that he’s having to do this, but there’s no one else. There’s no one left.

Except Mike. 

The Losers Club, he thinks, with the echoes of tired cynicism, had only been a temporary solution. A bomb waiting for detonation, and he has no plans to stick around for the aftermath, getting shrapnel stuck everywhere. He’ll take matters into his own hands before he ever lets that happen. The Losers were temporary, and it hurts more that he’s only just realising that now.

Mike was the only one who remembered, Stan knows now. Mike had been the only thing holding them together, the marshmallows to everyone’s spaghetti sticks, like those stupid exercises he did when he was eleven and in Boy Scouts. Mike had stayed, and he had remembered, and he had called them all home with that numb, hollow echo in his voice, and Stan refuses.

Stan refuses to be a part of it any longer. To be a part of whatever hell Pennywise has prepared for them, the torment he’s catered specially for all of them. He refuses to die like this, locked in fear and tied up in strings of his own creation, when his brain gets turned inside out for someone else’s enjoyment.

It’s why he’s here. Why he’s doing it himself, why he has the phone lying next to the bath, next to the book he’d bought especially, but hadn’t read yet. Something about teams, friends, promises. The words float about the page - you’ll float too, and Stan can’t breathe - so he puts it down and doesn’t look at it again. 

He rings again, punching in the numbers with a well rehearsed reluctance now. He’s been balanced on this precipice for a while now, with his fingers waiting to type out Mike’s number like it’s on the tip of his tongue.

He supposes, for all intents and purposes, it is. It’s plastered itself all along the walls of his skull, till it’s all he sees when he closes his eyes. Pennywise’s balloons and Mike’s phone number, and then they burst, like blood splatters, like gun shots. Stan hasn’t slept for a week.

“Hello?”

Mike picks up. He picks up, and all Stan can say is a ragged breath in and a bitten back sob. Ticking away, sand through an hour glass, running out of time, they all are.

“Stan?” Mike asks. Stan wonders how he recognised him from his breathing alone. “Stan, are you okay?”

“Mike,” Stan gasps, pushing the words past the blockage in his throat. Blood splatters on the walls. He turns the faucet on.

“Stan, what happened?” Mike says, urgency pushing at his words. Stan can hear the rough undercurrent of it running through his voice, a barely-there tremor, like he’s trying to hide it.

“Mike,” he says again. Like a broken record. “Mike, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Stan, what-”

“I can’t do it,” Stan says, inhaling through his nose and breathing heavily out of his mouth. “I can’t do it. I can’t let him play me like this, and I’m so sorry.”

“What do you mean? What are you doing?”

“I’m not coming, Mike. I’m not coming back to Derry.”

Just the name of his town alone stops his blood in its tracks, freezes the mirror over, turns the air into ice shards, grating on his skin. The cursed town. The sick town. The one with the blackened history and the blood heaving just below the dirt. Where there are more ghosts than people.

“What do you mean, not coming back…?” Mike asks, worry and confusion and fear bleeding into his voice. Stan doesn’t allow himself to feel remorse at it.

They’ll move on from this, he knows. And if they don’t, well. Pennywise will force them to.

“I’m not coming home,” he says, squeezing his eyes tight shut. “I’m… I’m sorry, Mike.”

It’s a half hearted goodbye, that much he knows. Nowhere near what Mike deserves. Stan doubts he’ll ever be able to repay him.

“Stan, wait,” Mike says. Stan waits, fingers shaking on the phone. Tears trace tracks down his cheeks, dripping off his chin. “Stan,” Mike says again, just to say it.

“What?”

“I love you,” Mike says, quiet. Like he’s whispering. “I always loved you, you know?”

Stan blinks. “I love you too. You know I do.”

He hears Mike breathe shakily. “Your eyes. I loved them. I love them now. Seeing when you were happy, or sad, or scared. All of it. And your hair. I just wanted to run my hands through it.” Mike laughs like he’s trying not to cry. “Your lips. Your smile. Your hands. You.”

“Mike…”

“If there’s one thing I’ll regret, it’ll be never getting to kiss you,” he says. He talks like he’s not even going to try to talk Stan out of it, like he knows what he’s going to do and he knows he won’t change his mind. Stan appreciates it. “I just want you to know, Stan. That we love you. That I love you.”

“I do.”

“And that we don’t blame you,” Mike continues. “I’m sorry, too. That it had to be this way, that we made that fucking pact, that it all happened in the first place.” He laughs again, but this time it’s angry, like he’s screaming out at the world and it just isn’t listening.

“It’s not your fault,” Stan says. “Please don’t think it’s your fault. There was nothing we could do.”

“That’s the worst part,” Mike says. He sniffs, and there’s a rush of air like he’s wiping away tears. “Just… I hope, that one day, we’ll be okay again.”

“You will.”

Mike breathes. Stan does too. “We’ll miss you,” he says. “I’ll miss you.”

“Me too.”

“And I love you,” he finishes. “I always loved you.”

Stan breathes in. He hangs up, and he gets into the bathtub.

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated, of course, to ri for being the reason ive written this in the first place. thank u, i love u. also pgg because without them i wouldnt have met ri or anyone and for simply being them because i dont think i could ever say it enough.
> 
> comment if u like! thank u for reading!!!


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